Vader's Daughter
by Lionchilde
Summary: A series of six drabbles dealing with Leia's reaction to the revelation that she receives from Luke during RotJ
1. Chapter 1

These are connected and very short, but I'm posting them together. I'm much more of an epic fic writer. I have a hard time with short work of any kind, and I really struggle with drabbles, which are not only incredibly short but have a very specific word count. Once in a while, I like to challenge myself, so I set a goal to write exactly six snapshots of Leia's thoughts as Luke walks off to face Vader in ROTJ, and I wanted each one to be a drabble (exactly 100 words). I had the opening line of the first one and the final line of the last one in mind when I began, so my ultimate goal was to communicate everything I envisioned and still get to the last line in the aforementioned number of steps.

I haven't had much inspiration/ability to focus on lengthy pieces, so I decided to try drabbles. What I ended up with was Vader's Daughter. I see quite a bit done about Luke and Vader in the fandom, and since the prequel trilogy came out, I see all kinds of people either making graphics or writing about the rather obvious parallels between Leia and her mother, but I very rarely see anything dealing with Leia and her relationship or reactions to Vader. I'm one of the few (possibly only) Star Wars fans I know who can honestly say that Luke was my least favorite of the OT characters. I had an active dislike of him until I was about twelve. I thought he was whiny and disrespectful in ANH; cocky and rude in ESB; and although my opinion of him softened in RotJ, I really wished that more time had been given to Leia's feelings and such upon learning that Vader was her father. I truly love Padme, and I thoroughly enjoy writing her, especially in _One Path_, which gives me the opportunity to develop a much more satisfying mother/daughter relationship than is possible in canon. That said, having grown up with a Star Wars where "the twins' mother" was largely a non-entity (meaning that she could have been anyone who was "kind but sad" and had given birth to Luke and Leia) I guess I've always wondered why there is such a heavy focus on the father/son dynamic in Star Wars, writing, either professionally or in fandom. Here's my small contribution.

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**Vader's Daughter**

Leia watched her brother's silhouette disappear into the forbidding night, swallowed up by the greater darkness that shrouded the forest moon. Once he was gone, she shivered, having nothing left to distract her from the rest of his revelation. There was still relief and comfort in being able to acknowledge what her heart had, somehow, always known. It was a faint relief, though, and the comfort flickered weakly, like a fire built with wet wood in a storm. It smoked heavily, assaulting her senses. Her eyes stung, and her throat in convulsive rebellion at the stench of her own skin.


	2. Chapter 2

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Her face was a mask, and though she longed to tear it off, terror rose within her at the thought of what lay beneath it. The eyes she saw with must still be hers, but she knew that she couldn't she couldn't trust them. The world they'd shown her until now had been an illusion, and the crimson night they showed her now was an unthinkable horror. Everything she'd known about herself was gone, and in its place was a reality that made her own flesh a prison. Cold metal fingers closed around her throat—fingers she knew too well.


	3. Chapter 3

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She looked down at her own hands, which were clenched into white-knuckled fists in front of her. A few minutes ago, she would have said she knew those hands, but now they were frightening and alien to her. She knew that her hands had done much good for the galaxy. She would have said that they were vibrant and alive; merciful, destined to heal a wounded galaxy. They were capable of killing in defense of life, but until now she had never seen a spot of scarlet on them. Until today, she would have said without question that they were human.


	4. Chapter 4

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She bit down on her lip until she tasted copper, but she welcomed the flow of blood. At least it told her that she was still alive. Vader may have been breathing, he may have been able to see and walk from place to place, but his existence couldn't be called living. His body was lump of flesh welded to durasteel, and his heart, if he could be said to have one at all was a jagged, unyielding thing of rough stone that sliced open any hand that dared to reach for it. That hand would soon be her brother's.


	5. Chapter 5

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Luke thought he could save Vader. Even after Vader had cut of his hand and forced him to jump very nearly to his death in the Cloud City, he believed that there was still good in him—some measure of the man he had been. Leia saw no good, no humanity, in the figure from her nightmares. She recognized only the towering, monolithic monster who had broken her body like brittle and ineffectual straw and held her immobile on the Death Star while all she knew and loved was obliterated. Would he now take her twin from her as well?


	6. Chapter 6

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Her heart clenched when Han's voice suddenly asked what was going on, but when she tried to formulate an answer, she felt as if she was struggling to breathe through wet wool. All she could manage was that she wanted to be alone. He pressed her for a while, then almost walked away while she stood staring at the indigo sky, but his footsteps halted and he returned. She felt a cold rush of air in her lungs as he apologized.

"Hold me," she entreated, almost hurling herself into his arms—the one place she knew that she was human.


End file.
